Physical Education at Red Hall

“Sport teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose – it teaches you about life.” ~ Billie Jean King

What is the intent of our Physical Education curriculum?

Our Physical Education curriculum is meticulously designed to foster holistic development and lifelong enthusiasm for physical activity. Our curriculum intent revolves around three key pillars: motor competence, rules, strategies and tactics and healthy participation.

Motor Competence: We aim to equip students with the fundamental movement skills necessary to navigate various physical activities confidently and effectively. Through a progressive and inclusive approach, we prioritise the development of locomotor, object control, and stability skills, laying a solid foundation for their physical journey.

Rules, Strategies, and Tactics: Our curriculum emphasises not only understanding but also applying rules, strategies, and tactics across a spectrum of sports and physical activities. Through interactive sessions, students learn the importance of teamwork, fair play, and strategic thinking, enhancing their cognitive abilities alongside their physical prowess.

Healthy Participation: We advocate for a balanced and sustainable approach to physical activity, emphasising enjoyment, safety, and overall well-being. Our curriculum promotes a culture of inclusive participation, where every child feels valued and supported to engage in activities at their own pace and comfort level.

Through these three pillars, our Physical Education curriculum aims to nurture well-rounded individuals who not only excel in physical activities but also embody essential values such as resilience, respect, and responsibility. We believe that by fostering a positive and inclusive learning environment, we can inspire a lifelong commitment to health and well-being among our students.

How do we implement our Physical Education curriculum?

We view learning and understanding as the process by which children commit the knowledge, skills, and comprehension they have been taught to their long-term memory. To achieve this effectively, it is crucial to avoid overwhelming children’s working memory with excessive new information. Consequently, our curriculum is meticulously planned and sequenced.

Our curriculum implementation has three main aims:

– We are enabling children to know and do more throughout their learning process. This happens through a focus on knowledge acquisition, including cultural capital and teaching and learning which aims to prepare children appropriately for the next stage in their life and challenges they may face.

– Enabling children to explore their own curiosities, questions and wonders. Allowing children to build strong opinions that they have formed on their own, whilst using their investigation skills
to find out more and puzzle over ideas that might seem difficult to grasp or understand.

– Finally, through encouraging our children to be risk takers. creating, communicating and sharing their own ideas and knowledge to support peers. Children of Red Hall, regardless of their starting point, will be encouraged to become confident to share what they know and what they can do, preparing them to make a valuable contribution to society.

How do we ensure this happens?
We emphasise the acquisition of knowledge, believing that increased understanding enhances our ability to think critically. This approach transcends learning isolated facts. We view knowledge as a foundation that can be expanded and refined through collaborative learning. When we refer to knowledge or knowing, we consider it to encompass two key aspects:

Substantive Knowledge: is the “what” learning. The factual content within a subject.
Disciplinary knowledge: is the “how” of learning. Behaviours or attitudes used within a discipline.

We aim to take knowledge and create schemas that help our children connect up what they know and build a coherent sense of the world around them. Learning should therefore build a developing network of knowledge, skills and conceptual understanding that children can readily access across the PE Curriculum and in wider life experiences.

Look at how we do it here: